Let’s Meet on Mars Hill

A special edition of Avatar (containing 9 minutes of extra footage) was released in theatres this weekend. I missed seeing the original on the big screen – much less in 3D – so I took the family to see it on Saturday.

Even before the re-release, Avatar became the highest grossing film in history (2.8 billion), beating out James Cameron’s other film, Titanic. Cameron is currently planning two sequels to complete the trilogy. Considering its popularity, this could become an even bigger cultural phenomena than Star Wars.

I don’t think it’s a coincidence that the three films I just mentioned all have a spiritual theme. If you recall the end of Titanic, Rose is reunited with Jack in death on the Grand Staircase, along with the others who had died. The ‘force’ of Star Wars was most certainly derived from Hinduism and Buddhism. And the main spiritual theme of Avatar comes from Pantheism, the idea that there is a divine “life force” in all living things. According to Wikipedia, Pantheism is...

...the view that the Universe (Nature) and God are identical. Pantheists thus do not believe in a personal, anthropomorphic or creator god.

In Avatar, however, Cameron takes it up a notch by explaining this phenomena scientifically – the trees on the planet are interconnected to one another with “more synapses than the human brain.” The planet’s natives, the Na’vi, are able to connect to this, upload and download data, access memories of their ancestors, like a “global network.”

All of this, combined with some anti-militaristic, pro-environmentalist sentiments, has made Avatar a target of criticism from the Christian community. But if that’s the only response we have, we’re missing an incredible opportunity.

The book of Acts describes how the apostle Paul visited the city of Athens. It says he was “greatly distressed to see that the city was full of idols.” So he went to the marketplace and began reasoning with the people there. They became intrigued enough to bring him to a meeting at the Areopagus (Mars Hill) where they asked him to explain this “new teaching”:

Paul then stood up in the meeting of the Areopagus and said: “Men of Athens! I see that in every way you are very religious. For as I walked around and looked carefully at your objects of worship, I even found an altar with this inscription: TO AN UNKNOWN GOD. Now what you worship as something unknown I am going to proclaim to you.

“The God who made the world and everything in it is the Lord of heaven and earth and does not live in temples built by hands. And he is not served by human hands, as if he needed anything, because he himself gives all men life and breath and everything else. From one man he made every nation of men, that they should inhabit the whole earth; and he determined the times set for them and the exact places where they should live. God did this so that men would seek him and perhaps reach out for him and find him, though he is not far from each one of us. ‘For in him we live and move and have our being.’ As some of your own poets have said, ‘We are his offspring.’

“Therefore since we are God’s offspring, we should not think that the divine being is like gold or silver or stone—an image made by man’s design and skill. In the past God overlooked such ignorance, but now he commands all people everywhere to repent. For he has set a day when he will judge the world with justice by the man he has appointed. He has given proof of this to all men by raising him from the dead.”

When they heard about the resurrection of the dead, some of them sneered, but others said, "We want to hear you again on this subject." At that, Paul left the Council. A few men became followers of Paul and believed. Among them was Dionysius, a member of the Areopagus, also a woman named Damaris, and a number of others. (Acts 17:22-34)

During worship the following Sunday, the Spirit of the Lord showed me that the reason Avatar can gross 2.8 billion dollars is not simply because it’s a good movie. It’s due to spiritual hunger. If we’re made in his image, then we are spiritual beings... so it’s only natural we’d be drawn to things of a spiritual nature. But if criticism is the only response we have to spiritual ideas that contradict Christianity, then we are missing the larger opportunity to engage in meaningful dialog and present people with the Truth.

After all, isn’t that what Paul did so many years ago on Mars Hill?